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I had been having computer issues for a while. I mentioned in my June 2017 Current Distractions post that I wanted to upgrade my computer. I did upgrade my computer, adding more RAM, and almost adding a new hard drive except that something weird happened there and I wasn't able to.

And then, last month, my 7+ year old MacBook Pro, Taliesin, finally bit the dust. It just won't turn on anymore, apparently. Fortunately I'd seen the writing on the wall and had been diligently backing things up, so as far as I know right now, everything is now migrated to my new Mac Mini, which doesn't have a name yet. The last one was named Toby, and that was the computer that I started this blog on! So I feel like we've come full circle. I hope that the new computer, whatever I end up naming it, will see the end of this project.

Yes, I am literally writing this before even naming my computer. Also yes, I do have access to a lot of other computers that I could've written this post on before now. I am simply not that dedicated.

I think also needless to say, two weeks into March, that February now feels like a distant memory. It doesn't help that I've been working extra time and also going out and being social quite a lot. Also I'm still swimming! This week has been a bad week in general and I haven't gone since Sunday, but I'm going tomorrow evening! I swear! In February I swam 13,700m and as of right now I have a cumulative total for the year of over 20km! I'm so proud of myself!

So yeah. I've been watching the usual shows, and doing the usual things, and as of the beginning of this month I was supposed to start spring cleaning but I haven't actually started yet. I'm going through my posting schedule right now, and clearly I missed posting the book review that was supposed to be posted this month (it's for East of Eden, I hope you'll like it!). I'm still going to post it but of course not on the previously scheduled day.

Anyway, this has been a weird update, stay tuned for things to get back to normal, I hope.

...I wrote about increasing the number of women in engineering. As usual, more years of perspective means that there are some things in this post that I would probably rephrase if given the chance, but I generally still agree with the points I made. This is something I still think about a lot as I try to figure out where I want to go next with my career.

Well, I've ranked all of the novels I read last year and I've added them in to my personal Top 100 list. The results confirm what I felt at the end of last year: that I'd read very few books that really blew me away. The Secret Garden ranked highest at #35, but that was after being dethroned from its position at #23. Again I have to remind myself that, having read over 700 books in my life to date, if even only two thirds of them are novels, that means I have to exclude about one out of every five books I've read from this list. The Dune series is in last place right now, for God's sake! And again I have to face the fact that many of the books on the upper reaches of this list are there for nostalgic purposes, or because of the profound effect they've had on me over the course of my life. The books I read last year are in bold in the list below.

The Harry Potter series (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) - J. K. Rowling

The Pendragon series (The Merchant of Death, The Lost City of Faar, The Never War, The Reality Bug, Black Water, The Rivers of Zadaa, The Quillan Games, The Pilgrims of Rayne, Raven Rise, The Soldiers of Halla) - D. J. MacHale

City of Stairs - Robert Jackson Bennett

The Canterville Ghost - Oscar Wilde

The Little House series (Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie, Farmer Boy, On the Banks of Plum Creek, By the Shores of Silver Lake, Little Town on the Prairie, The Long Winter, These Happy Golden Years, The First Four Years) - Laura Ingalls Wilder

The Chronicles of Narnia (The Magician's Nephew; The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; The Horse and His Boy; Prince Caspian; The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’; The Silver Chair; The Last Battle) - C. S. Lewis

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